We have some very, very good news for Europeans (which happens to include myself): we have the European Parliament on our sides when it comes to battling ACTA. If you may recall, ACTA is basically an attempt by the US to impose upon the rest of the world draconian measures like three strikes laws and the DMCA. All parties within the European Parliament have together put forth a resolution that would effectively tackle ACTA.

But it's hardly the only sucky law. The much critisized 3 strikes laws would never fly here in america. Instead, they're being pushed mostly by european countries. And with that italian court decision, you can even see that the DMCA has some benefits that europe doesn't have.

So complaining about how the US is behind some gigantic plot to fool the rest of the world is just stupid. It's the content providers and their whole industry that is driving this forward, and that includes plenty of Europeans.

It's the content providers and their whole industry that is driving this forward, and that includes plenty of Europeans.

Perhaps. However, the ACTA is not a European initiative, it is a U.S initiative. Why is the U.S government doing the content providers bidding? At least the European governments aren't being total pushovers in this case.

Well, I'm not trying to push it. I guess you mean "you" as in the RIAA, MPAA, and others in the industry who drafted this stuff up.

And yes, I do think that's why they're trying to stick it in ACTA, so they don't have to get Congress to give a straight vote on something they think they'd lose.

I'll quote wikipedia, which states my argument for me:

Critics argue ACTA is part of a broader strategy of venue shopping and policy laundering employed by the trade representatives of the US, EU, Japan, and other supporters of rigid intellectual property enforcement. This strategy entails negotiating for terms in international treaties that might prove too politically unpopular to pass in national assemblies. Similar terms and provisions currently appear in the World Customs Organization draft SECURE treaty,[4] and critics have argued that the anticircumvention provisions of Title I of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act were similarly passed after policy laundering via treaties negotiated through the World Intellectual Property Organization.

It's the content providers and their whole industry that is driving this forward, and that includes plenty of Europeans.

Perhaps. However, the ACTA is not a European initiative, it is a U.S initiative. At least the European governments aren't being total pushovers in this case.

Just curious, but is the US actually pushing ACTA any more than the European Commission is? I don't see any information that supports that, but then i didn't look to hard either. From what i can tell, the US, European Commission, and a whole bunch of others all have hard-ons for ACTA, not just a single country.

Why is the U.S government doing the content providers bidding?

Umm, because they have lots of money to throw at the politicians? I've yet to see a government anywhere that didn't bow down before people waving cash. Sad but true.